[Dajjal]

Here are comments from my brother, who clued me onto Obama's artist.

Here is the official poster sold at the Obama campaign website:

Product Code: PO26951:

http://store.barackobama.com/product_p/po26951.htm

http://store.barackobama.com/Artists_for_Obama_s/1018.htm

The artist who created this image is Shepard Fairey.

As Time Magazine puts it, SF is "The man who launched the sticker revolution."

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/street_art/20.html

Previously people who did "graffiti art," like Warhol find Jean-Michel Basquiat, spray painted buildings. Even if they did the same image over and over again, each spray painting was unique. Fairey hit on the idea of pre-printing his vandalism as stickers and then covering an urbane area with the endless repeation on the same image.

The first idea SF had was a sticker of Andre the Giant:

In Fairey's mind, Andrea the Giant gets mixed up with Big Brother, since Andrea, is, well, big. This produces Fairey's next sticker campaign: "Obey Andrea":

Hitting upon Soviet aesthetics, Fairey became a big hit with those who wax nostalgic for the return of the USSR. He founded BLK/MRKT Visual Communications to sell his rebel hipness to Hawaiian Punch:

http://www.blkmrkt.com/blkmrkt.html

The art side is run out of http://obeygiant.com ... Here are some examples of that work:

http://obeygiant.com/archives?nggpage=7

http://mkgallery.com/artists/fairey/fairey_2006_3.html

Of course God reminds us not to value this life to too highly by allowing it to endlessly descend to lower and lower levels of self parody. This it came to pass, my brothers, that when Penguin Books was getting around to reissue the Orwell "backlist," they picked Fairey to do the covers for "1984" and "Animal Farm" ... i.e., a guy who thinks Stalin was cool will now insert himself into the history of these texts:

http://thepenguinblog.typepad.com/the_penguin_blog/2008/04/it-was-a-bright.html

Oh yes, this is not eltist:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/13/magazine/13consumed.xlarge1.jpg

Here just a few Fairey prints from his "Obey" website:

http://www.thegiant.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Prints

Also it seems that Obama says he picked Fairey because of the "political messages" in his earlier art (all that Stalin stuff!) ...

Obama has a plank in his platform for artists

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/additional/Obama_FactSheet_Arts.pdf

Barack Obama: A Champion for Arts and Culture
A Platform In Support of the Arts
[excerpt]
Create an Artist Corps: Barack Obama supports the creation of an "Artist Corps" of young artists trained to work in low-income schools and their communities. Studies in Chicago have demonstrated that test scores improved faster for students enrolled in low-income schools that link arts across the curriculum than scores for students in schools lacking such programs.

I assume this government funded "Artist Corps" Obama is going to create will be the ones drawing the pictures of the Glorious People's Tractor plowing the land ....

See also this companion thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2006109/posts
Shepard Fairey: Obey Obama
by Jeff Beer

[Dajjal]

Obama ping

See also the companion thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2006109/posts
Shepard Fairey: Obey Obama
interview with Jeff Beer

[Jeff Chandler]

www.obeythepurebreed.com/

[Free ThinkerNY]

It seems that Obama is attracting every America hating Marxist and terrorist to his cause. He loves having their support. He’s the most dangerous candidate for the Presidency in the history of this nation.

[weegee]

The Obama campaign solicited this artist. Obama himself sent him a hand signed letter and acknowledged seeing his work in galleries AND on stop signs in public.

Obama knew what he was getting.

It is getting tiresome listening to this Socialist stooge pretend that he didn’t know what everyone he’s ever associated with had to say about Karl Marx.

[Ilya Mourometz]

Fascinating and another angle in may growing conviction that Obama is as close to a true fascist as this Country has ever produced. The artwork is, objectively speaking, powerful and effective. By the same token, politicians in the US and Europe have, for decades, shied away from such powerful imagery precisely because of its over fascist overtones. The whole “godlike” image projected through the use of bold colors and simple, stark lines—whether to demonize Bush as an SS/Hitlerian freak, or Obama as the heir to Guevera’s mantle of mass-murder.

Every day, I become more and more terrified of what this man, Obama, is really about. This artist, clearly talented, must understand and know what he’s doing. I can appreciate the fact that one might view Leni Reifenstahl as a great artist, separate and apart from the regime she supported, yet I doubt hers is a legacy one would envy. Unlike Riefenstahl, who claims to have been duped or oblivious, this person, Fairey, is fully conscious of the role he is playing in bringing a true fascist to power in this country. Not the fantasy of fascism that he projects onto Bush, but a true fascist in the mold of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. For all his deliberately misused talents in the service of true evil, may Fairey’s name be cast out from the family of man forever.

[Dajjal]

Fairey is having trouble on another front: the estates of some artists whose work he has been "appropriating" are not amused and see Fairey as a plagiarist.

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey
by Mark Vallen

[weegee]

Mr. Fairey should read what George Orwell had to say about 1984 and Animal Farm. They were about Stalinists. Not just in the USSR but also in the US and UK.

[Dajjal]

Great parodies of Fairey at the Peoples' Cube:

http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1884
Hope, Dope, Grope, and Other Obamunist Posters
by Commissar Maksim

[Dajjal]

Again, I’d like to tip my hat to my brother for doing all the “legwork” in finding this stuff. Kudos to him.

[Dajjal]

Another article on Fairey:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-daum12apr12,0,5472791.column
Obama As An Art Form
by Meghan Daum

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Just wow.

[OeOeO]

[endthematrix]

I’m going to pop a few of these posters along with the Obama support letter to some local businesses and public offices. This will raise eye brows!

[beaversmom]

Infidel ping. Just something else taken out of context I guess. A misunderstanding.

[Dajjal]

Here is one of his mind-control posters. You "obey" him if you buy it, and you "obey" him if you don't buy it.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Dajjal!

[21twelve]

The first time I saw that first poster (”Change” with the different colors) was on FR and I thought for sure it was some freeper’s great artwork showing how Obama is a Communist by using that old-style commie imagery. Seriously - it wasn’t until I saw it in the paper or a magazine that it was real. The other thought that came to mind was it looked like a poster from “1984”. I see he did some of the revised artwork for its re-release. (Or at least plagerized some artwork for the release).

[Dante3]

bttt

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Hitting upon Soviet aesthetics, Fairey became a big hit with those who wax nostalgic for the return of the USSR."

Maybe that explains the mind control and messiah cult appeal of his campaign.

"Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual." What kind of nutjob would say something like that or believe it?

[yoe]

The art speaks for the proletariat, the myth of the “worker” happily all starving and living in crowded flats spouting poetry etc. together is the reminder and message. Less clear is Obama’s signature……..any of you want to take a swing at deciphering Obama’s signature?